Defense bill loses $700 million

House Armed Services Committee leaders stripped almost $700 million in special projects that opponents had slammed as earmarks from the annual defense policy bill before a House-Senate conference began work on a final version, a committee spokesman said Friday.

“The House Armed Services Committee long ago determined that we would not take the provisions to conference. As you know, it is a point of pride among the committees that we do not authorize hollow budget authority,” spokesman Claude Chafin said, explaining that since the annual Senate and House defense appropriations bills do not include money for them, they would have been moot in any case.

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“There’s nothing even remotely resembling an earmark in there,” he said.

The projects – contained in the House version of the bill passed in May — had caught the attention of taxpayer groups and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who complained they were an effort to get around a two-year congressional ban on earmarks. McCaskill had said she would try to strip them out in the conference and at one point threatened to block the bill if they were included.

The watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste earlier this year identified 111 special projects in the House bill totaling $651.7 million, of which 59 appeared to be similar to those identified as earmarks last year. They included, for example, $7 million inserted by Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), a freshman member of the Armed Services panel, “to assess the desirability of establishing a federally funded research and development center for nanotechnology” that a university in his district would be able to compete to host.

Congressional sources close to the conference talks, which began Wednesday, say the final bill is expected to be ready for floor action in both chambers next week, with an eye toward having it to President Barack Obama by Dec. 16.

The administration has threatened to veto the bill if it contains controversial provisions regarding the handling of suspected terrorists. A congressional source said Obama spoke to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) this week to lobby against the provisions, and a White House official confirmed the conversation.

Another official said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met Wednesday with lawmakers “to discuss budget and other matters.”